Happy Belated New Year!

[JonMyrlennBailey]

Hope your holiday season was ducky.

I first discovered Trainz 16 years ago (year 2006) with a free Auran Demo 2004. It was a route based in Australia. Kinda a primer to Trainzing. Sometimes later, I tried the 2006 Demo but it ran poorly on my now-archaic computer, a 2006-vintage Toshiba laptop with XP. In 2013, I finally bought an edition of Trainz: 2012. In 2015, I started building in Surveyor. I also bought T:ANE in the summer of 2015 when it came out and shelved it for a good number of years because my PC back then was underpowered.

Every now and then I have to reinstall 2012 as I'm route-developing. I've had to do this for seven years now. Commands break down over time and so does content. Ext. DB Repairs and reboots do not always help.

Content can vanish from a route for no apparent reason. Sometimes on surveyor tabs, content names in red text appear meaning they are broken and can't be added to a route. Sometimes the content thumbnails in surveyor are empty, there is no rotating picture of the content even though the name text is in white. Content (engines, cars, animals, trees, houses, etc.) without visible spinning thumbnail previews on surveyor tabs cannot be injected onto a route or session. This seems to happen most often with locos and other rail cars.

The loco and rail cars that seems to auto-disappear "go AWOL" most often from a developing route in progress is:

SP SD40T-2, <kuid2:45324:100141:2> by norfolksouthern37
Also one or more of Tank Trains A, B and/or C bynorfolksouthern37

Another traincar that likes to vamoose is a certain caboose:
SP Bay Window Caboose, <kuid2:35815:15123:1> by jkerlee


It is whenever this content vanishes from a route I'm building that I usually have to do a TS12 reinstall to get that stuff back on routes. I may have to download some more stuff to fix broken stuff from CDP after game reinstall. Some crackerjack computer science experts might want to chime in as to why certain stuff vanishes from routes over time in development. The devil in software is all in the ones and zeros. The software and/or data seems to develop "cancer" and "mutate" over time.

 

[JCitron]

Happy New Year to you too, Jon. Mine was quiet as usual. I Trainzed and used Cities Skylines just like any other day.

I've Trainzed since 2003, well December 2003 just after Christmas when Auran sold TRS2004 via Merscom at CompUSA. I had watched for it because my PC didn't like the previous version. I tried the early demos and my ATI 8500 used to crash. It crashed on just about every program I used, and MSTS was annoying because the editor was horrid. I found out about Auran because I so happened to visit the ancient forum when Greg Lane and all the old folks were there when I purchased Paint Shed for MSTS and saw the link to www.auran.com on the box.

When I upgraded my PC, I checked again and saw TRS2004 was coming out in December and watched for it in the store. I recently found the receipt in a box of old papers. The receipt was barely visible since the intervening years and heat took its toll on the thermal paper.

Anyway, TS12 losing assets sounds like a straight up database issue and there's no need to reinstall. Have you tried an extended database repair? An EDR as we call it. You can find this on the menu along with Database Repair in Content Manager.

This can and will take a very long time depending upon how much data you have therefore we recommend you run this overnight. At the end, you need to check for faulty assets. You will see some, or probably a real lot of faulty assets. Don't panic. Highlight a bunch, right-click and choose View errors and warnings. Most of these will disappear and that will be the end of them. If you have any left over, then you need to investigate those assets separately. The process may also trigger a validation process. These can take a very, very long time to complete due to the 45 seconds per asset it takes to run through the database. With my 178,000 assets I had at the time, the process would take 14 or 15 hours. There's not much you can do either until this process completes because it's a resource hog.

What can cause this?

Probably shutting down the computer too soon after exiting TS12.

Unlike TANE and TRS19, TS12 took a very long time to button up and shutdown the database prior to exiting. By turning off the computer while this was processing in the background, it can cause database corruption. The only way to know when TS12 has shutdown is to watch the process. Rather than bring up task manager, there's a solution built right into TS12. Under the options menu on the Launcher (Is it options or settings?), go into Developer settings and choose show database processes in console window. This will open up some small terminal windows (consoles) and minimize them. You can open them up by clicking on them and watch the processing taking place such as logging into the DLS and even installing content. More importantly here, our purpose is to know when TS12 has finished cleaning up the database and is ready to close. When these windows close, the database is shutdown, and it's safe to turn off the computer.

 

[pware]

Not belated, but early.

Chinese New Year is on Feb 1st.
Sri Lankan New Year is Apr 13-14th.
Murador People of Western Australia New Year is Oct 30th.
Diwali (India) New Year is Oct 27th.
Ethiopian New Year is Sep 12th.
Islamic New Year is Sep 22nd.
Hindu New Year is Mar 22nd.
Assyrian New Year is Apr 1st.
Iranian New Year is Mar 21st.
Balinese New Year is Mar 7th.
Bengali New Year is Apr 14-15th.
Jewish New Year is Sep 29th.
Korean New Year is Feb 5th.
Mongolian New Year is Feb 16th.

So you can see that there are plenty of dates and excuses to celebrate the New Year this year.

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

Hello, John:

Yes, I've tried EDR whenever northfolksouthern37 stuff disappears from a layout I'm working on and is not showing up revolving in Surveyor tab thumbnails. No help there. My Trainzing PC is almost never shut down. I put it to Sleep once in a while. Sometimes Trainz Surveyor will be still open while the PC is in Sleep mode. I also checked the content that disappeared in CM for broken or missing dependencies. Nothing wrong there on NFS37's stuff. Sometimes I will create a new test route to see if that content missing in my other route can be added there and sure enough it can be. Something in my particular route file must break down over time. However, after a game reinstall, I can get 37's stuff to reappear again in the same route that lost it prior to the reinstall. Something breaks down in my route file over time but a fresh reinstall of the game fixes it thankfully. Computer science is above and beyond my understanding.

I still like to build new routes in TS12. I don't want to create a new route in TANE or above yet because in case I decide later on I don't like TANE or above, my stuff can still be compatible with TS12. I can move routes to forward editions but not backwards. Trainzroutes lack backwards compatibly. I've used TS12 for route building since 2015 and have gotten quite comfortable with it.

 

[OddRails]

If I'm not mistaken -- which happens a lot -- 2012 likes to do automatic updates of assets whenever it is online. In a few cases the older asset is obsoleted and replaced with an asset that has a new name. My difficulty occurs if I'm not online long enough for the updates to finish and I end up with broken assets. Like buildings that become black boxes. Or maybe there is something else going on that I'm totally unaware of.

I don't know if everything would be resolved if 2012 is able to update everything. If a person doesn't want to deal with it, the best option seems to reinstall and keep 2012 offline.

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

If I'm not mistaken -- which happens a lot -- 2012 likes to do automatic updates of assets whenever it is online. In a few cases the older asset is obsoleted and replaced with an asset that has a new name. My difficulty occurs if I'm not online long enough for the updates to finish and I end up with broken assets. Like buildings that become black boxes. Or maybe there is something else going on that I'm totally unaware of.

I don't know if everything would be resolved if 2012 is able to update everything. If a person doesn't want to deal with it, the best option seems to reinstall and keep 2012 offline.

I don't mind reinstalling TS12 every 5 months if need be. The need to reinstall TS12 clean again occurs about every 50 saved increments of route/session development to CDP. Sooner or later, some traincars just like to vamoose from the route in progress and/or just fail to make themselves available to be re-added. It will be interesting to see if a saved consist can be re-added to a route should part of that consist disappear like a certain loco. On second thoughts, it's just a good idea to reinstall once content starts dropping out involuntarily anyway. Whenever the AI mode goes totally haywire is another time for a fresh reinstall.

 

[GaryP]

Wow, more old Trainzers. I remember Trainz back when Auran owned it. It crashed all the time.
I was working as a programmer back then, although now they call us Software Engineers. I guess it sounds better.
Another 6 months I can retire, but I'm not sure...

I just wanted to jump in and say happy new year to all of you.

~G